Deeplinks

When the presidential debates are aired by CNN on June 3rd and 5th, the public will be able to edit, remix, parody and publish the footage ? without worrying about copyright violation. CNN has pledged to make debate footage available to the public ?without restriction.?

CNN's decision comes on a heels of an open letter from a broad coalition of scholars, public advocates, and Internet entrepreneurs calling for the release of all debate footage under a Creative Commons license. Several major candidates have also joined the call.

In a recent editorial, the New York Times denounced the Bush Administration?s latest attempt to radically expand spying powers and shield the NSA's domestic spying program:

The measure would not update [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens? e-mail and phone calls?.

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush?s spying program.

Learn cyberlaw without leaving cyberspace through the State of Play Academy. The Academy offers free classes through the virtual world There.com. The Spring Semester has already started, and runs through June 8.

The virtual classes will teach you the sort of fascinating stuff your real college never gets around to offering, like "Claims of Copyright Misuse based on First Amendment Interests," "The Viacom-Youtube Lawsuit," and "Election 2008 and the Remix Culture." EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston is signed up to teach a class called "Every Move You Make: Location Tracking and the Law."

Copyrighting ReligionPakistan court quotes American trademark law in deciding to
forbid a religious group from using Islamic epithets and
practices: "The principles involved are: do not deceive and
do not violate the property rights of others."

"As currently proposed, Real ID will fail for several reasons. From a technical and implementation perspective, there are serious questions about its operational abilities both to protect citizen information and resist attempts at circumvention by adversaries. Financially, the initial unfunded $11 billion cost, forced onto the states by the federal government, is excessive. And from a sociological perspective, Real ID will increase the potential for expanded personal surveillance and lay the foundation for a new form of class segregation in the name of protecting the homeland.

Despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided a mere eight days notice about the one and only national town hall on REAL ID, the public made its opposition loud and clear. Nearly every speaker at the four hour event in Davis, CA criticized the privacy-invasive mandate, which would force states to standardize drivers' licenses and create massive, interlinked databases of your personal information.

As was reported back in February, an enterprising hacker unearthed and posted one of the decryption keys used by AACS to decode HD-DVD movies (other keys and exploits have been made available in the weeks since). Now the AACS-LA (the entity that licenses AACS to makers of HD-DVD players) has set its lawyers on the futile mission of trying to get every instance of at least one key (hint: it begins with 09 f9) removed from the Internet.

EFF's Bloggers' Rights campaign has scored some big victories in defense of free speech and privacy rights for bloggers. Now, you can show your support for the Blogger's Rights campaign by picking up one of EFF's new Bloggers' Rights T-shirts. Buy a shirt for $25 from the EFF shop, or get it as part of your membership.